The art of conservation of paper, including books, prints and other works of art on paper is very old and many techniques are known to those skilled in the art. Indeed, the present applicant has previously developed a suction table to facilitate the conservation of works of art on paper, which is widely employed by paper conservators, and upon which the present invention is an improvement.
As will appear in more detail below, the prior art has employed a separate treatment or humidity chamber and apparatus with a suction or vacuum table to which the work piece is transferred after wetting to draw water through a paper or other fibrous article to be treated to remove stains, acids or other deleterious or defacing materials. However, the methods of the prior art have been disadvantageous, since they employed spray techniques to apply the aqueous treating fluids to the work piece. Such methods of application tended to cause over wetting and dripping, which could cause the irregular penetration of stains into the work piece with consequent damage. Moreover, with spray application techniques of the prior art, it has been difficult to achieve controlled uniform wetting of the work piece or controlled slow drying of the work piece from the lower surface to the upper surface thus preventing migration of any stains or other deleterious materials toward the upper surfaces of the material being treated.
It has been apparent, therefore, that a need has existed in the art to overcome these disadvantages.
It is an object of the present invention, therefore, to provide a system, apparatus and methods for the controlled uniform wetting of a work piece with a treatment fluid in such a way that the fluid does not drip through the work piece carrying stains or other deleterious materials into the work piece.
It is another object of the invention to provide for the controlled slow drying of the uniformly wetted work piece from the lower to the upper surface thereof, thus preventing stains or other deleterious material from migrating towards the upper surface of the material being treated.
It is another object of the invention to provide for the drying of the work piece using air pressure only without touching the surface of the fibrous material which may contain highly water soluble and friable media that would be damaged if any other pressure was applied. These and other objects of the invention, which will become apparent below, are achieved as described below.